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Monthly Archives: March 2014

Hockey is a dramatic actor and will expressively play his political machinations through distinct repertoire of body language. We had a ‘jolly Joe’ before Christmas and now there is the ‘furrowing his brow, bowing and shaking his jowls’ with the foreboding bad news of the budget.

As Treasurer, and without an economics degree, ‘Hockey comes across as full of bluster and bombast.’ Today he states ‘I’m dealing with the reality here.’ This is an interesting comment given this government does it’s best to ignore reality. The scientific data of climate change and ecological devastation, the denial of statistics that underpin equal opportunity to health and education to strengthen economic prosperity with positive social outcomes rather than at the cost of social outcomes that only ever touch the vulnerable.

This is a movie worth seeing. I won’t tell you the subject matter as it may be off putting or too confronting. So I believe you are best to come to this film without any expectation as I did so that you can enter without prejudice.

What I will tell you is that it is a delightful and engaging film that provides a journey to meet some of the deepest challenges that can be encountered in life. This is played out with a remarkably tender and whimsical scenario that draws on the heights of an imaginative and courageous spirit.

In Australia, economic impoverishment is what single parents, unemployed, carers of the elderly and disabled experience usually through no fault of their own. Support of family and friends often fall away when circumstances hit. So, without the support of a caring extended family, and the attitude conveyed in the meager support payments, there is the reinforcing of the demoralised valueless position that is a stigma for those who are already the most vulnerable in our society.

Surely, this is akin to the scourge of ostracism of the Middle Ages where the unlovely dwell impoverished on the outskirts of society. A society cannot consider itself sophisticated while this occurs especially in the midst of an increasingly rich country where it is only the rich who are getting richer.

More than any other quality, the Coalition is marked by a false anxiety. Hockey’s statement that we are at the end of the age of entitlement is a confusing one, particularly when this government is obviously acting contrary to this strategy. The only exception is when it is actually those in need of support who, in the eyes of Abbott, Hockey and their colleagues, must be fully to blame for their own misfortune. This is the same government who took away low and middle income superannuation initiatives to give even more to the superannuation support of the high income earners. This is the same government who wants to provide a not only a new welfare regime in the form of parental payment leave (which is a good idea) but wants to make a gold plated version of it.

This is at a time once again when the overlooked are, you guessed, overlooked. The older workers who have worked all their lives and are now unable to acquire work mostly because they are over 45 years old, along with carers who have had to sacrifice their livelihoods, and often at the prime income generating portion of their lives, to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. This is at a time when single parents and their children are living below the poverty line.